Mobile terminals, or mobile (cellular) telephones, for mobile telecommunications systems like GSM, UMTS, D-AMPS and CDMA2000 have been used for many years now. In the older days, mobile terminals were used almost only for voice communication with other mobile terminals or stationary telephones. With added functionality, such as calendar/organizer/time planner, www/wap browsing, video telephony, electronic messaging (e.g. SMS, MMS, email, instant messaging), digital image or video recording, FM radio, music playback, electronic games, and word processing, mobile terminals are nowadays more like small computers.
With the improved user interface, including color screens, users have been given the ability to change the appearance of the user interface in the mobile terminal, typically as part of a theme. A theme is a collection of configuration settings affecting the user interface, such as background color and text color in a main screen area, title bar, etc. A background image may also be part of a theme. For example, one theme may be a theme for a particular football team and another theme may be a theme for the group “Outkast”.
A key factor in making the experience of using mobile terminals as familiar as possible and still unique, is personalization. Themes allow personalization to some degree, but there is a general problem of how to enhance and improve personalization to make the user experience as pleasant and easy as possible.